Saikawa Shigeo
Saikawa Shigeo is the main antagonist of the Liar Game: Roots of A short, Nine Darts. He makes no other appearances. Appearance & Personality Shigeo is a middle-aged man with greying hair who wears a suit and tie through his appearances. He has a prominent grey mustache, and wears glasses. He tends to smile frequently, masking his underlying motives. He is quite prejudist, not believing that those with Green Disease deserve to live among normal people, and rather should be drained of all their work potential on their ways to the grave. He is also a bit like Liar Game antagonists such as Fujisawa Kazuo and Yokoya Norihiko in that he will do anything he needs to in order to make more money. History Shigeo had been making money off of Green Disease victims for years before Minoru came, long enough to fill up a full cabinet with business files. When Shibara Minoru was hired, he was one of the first to greet him and inform him of what they did there, as if it were perfectly normal. When he finds Minoru snooping around his business records, Shigeo sends him to the Garden of Punishment to think about his actions. Later, Minoru challenges Shigeo to a darts game called 501. Shigeo wins in 17 moves, which Minoru applauds. He then suggests that if a patient with Green Disease could do that, it would prove the issue of their eyesight to be false, and therefore the rest of their symptoms. He begs for Shigeo to allow Kisaragi Kyo, a victim of Green Disease, to challenge all 20 of the employees to a game, and if he wins, the facility is to be shut down. Shigeo smugly agrees to this, knowing that he has ways to make Kyo lose no matter what. On the day of the game, Kyo manages to beat the first 19 employees with relative ease. Shigeo had hired a professional dart-player for the 20th, who subsequently threw a 10-darter, which is an almost perfect game. Kyo would have to play a perfect 9-dart game in order to win against him, with which he struggles, but manages to accomplish. Shigeo is impressed, but says that the agreement was to beat all of the employees, and he had yet to play due to the professional dart player making the 20th. He suggested that the final round be a bit different; he placed an apple in Minoru's mouth and told Kyo that he needed to hit the apple, but not Minoru, in order to free his fellow men and women. Kyo was about to give up, not willing to risk impaling his best friend, but Minoru tells him that it's okay; he is confident that Kyo can do it, and become a professional dart player. Kyo succeeds, and the facility is forced to free its slaves. Saikawa in One Outs While the characters are from different series, Saikawa Shigeo bears a stunning resemblance to Saikawa Tsuneo from one of Shinobu Kaitani's other works, One Outs. It is quite likely that Shigeo's concept design was taken from Tsuneo's. In One Outs, he is the manager of the Lycaons, the main baseball team of the series. He, too, is willing to do anything it takes to get more money, signing Tokuchi up for the pitcher of his team even when all his qualifications are unbalanced and it is clearly weighted in the favor of Saikawa. Category:Characters Category:Antagonists Category:Roots of A Category:Manga